I held open a door

I held open a door 
I'd just held open a door
and she said
carrying the sum of her days in two shopping bags 
that a grandmothers shoulders , long in the tooth, tourniqueted against the ravages of surrender
bore like replenishing breasts
She said without needing to engage or acknowledge with effort 
'Thanks son'
And long dormant tear ducts juddered.

And with that they trembled and the waters of woeful souls climbed the stoic tubes of covert hurt because out of blue heavens fate opened the tap but I just said in respectable English 
'You're welcome'

My next step was through a screen of epiphany 
for she, without ritualism projected the  insight of a million Caribbean  matriachs
and it's sublimeness liberated me from the constraints of this flesh and blood illusion
I whispered
'You're welcome Auntie'

which drew in a misted choir of second and third generation  who never heard the fractured anthem of the first , although they loved in the same playground , who had each once 
whispered 'you're welcome auntie' 

I wondered if they ever heard  more than the thanks son that surged like a tempest of whispering rapids climbing programmes of denial behind my eyes because pretence was pertinent to survival

I wondered if the children and grandchildren of my peers would ever relax to a melodic spice of Caribbean accent lifting their spirits on a journey in stories of 'back home' in derivatives of Latin

Of gully and snake and white suited duppy and jumby umbrella
Of Rum cake or cook up rice
Anti-man and seawall dance
of Gt Banna name reds and de coolie man wha sell cow foot

I wondered if they'd ever go to be doused in the milk of a sun that merely dimmed it's rays when it's eyes closed
where we drifted off beside the cane field on a pure marijuana mellow themed with the acoustical sails of  crickets in their melodic funk jam

It overshadows the chemical feulled seclusion coated with preserve of bad weather and the condition of your front yard dependant on the parasitical success of suburban vermin here in the destination of the middle passage

I wondered how many days a sister and grandmother of another might hail a grown soldier
'Son' 
with sunshine in her throat . reminding him he ; or she belonged and bosoms never waned on the crest of western convention
Who's kinesis floated beyond averted gaze for inconsequential  pariahs of an empire in service of sterling 
no matter where in the chain of elders and soldiers and kings and gods and islands and scattered bloodlines cast the four corners.
the quiet wisdom of
aunties preserved in layered droplets of Atlantic heat
camouflaged  between commercial verses and inter migrated  like trans-global files of spies in an undistinguished war
and in a capoeran spirit affirmed in the gesture 'thank you son'